BATTLESHIPS BRING PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 139, 8 December 1911, Page 4

BATTLESHIPS BRING PEACE

BRITAIN WILL NOT BEG OR BUY SECURITY. FIRST LORD'S SPEECH. Expenditure on the Nwy, and the circumstances that govern its risei or fall, was tho subject of an important statement by Mir. McKenna, until just recently, First Lord of the Admiralty, when addressing his constituents at Abersychan, North Monmouth, on September 30. The First Lord said he Mt justified in repeating what he told the House of Commons last March, that if thorn was no fresh increase in foreign naval programmes the tide of naval expenditure would not only cease to rise at the end of this year, .but there would be an actual reduction in naval expenditure next year. But now and always the scale of our naval expenditure must depend on the scale adopted by foreign countries. Many people in this country denied the necessity of maintaining our fleets at their present standard, but they were profoundly mistaken in their estimate of national requirements. Peace, he went on to say, is not only the highest human good, but it is the greatest material interest of the British Empire, "Situated as we are/' he continued impressively, "with out vast and varied overseas possessions, our gigantic foreign trade, and our unapproachable mercantile marine, we, at any .rate, can gain nothing by Avar. But the extent of our world-wide interests inevitably brings us from time to time in contact—l will not say in conflict—with the aims, the hopes, the ambitious, of other peoples. Nothing but the existence of a commanding fleet can safeguard circumstances, the freedom of .the great high road of the sea, upon which our security and our very existence depend. "We cannot beg peace as a suppliant. We cannot buy peace. We can guarantee it only ,by our own exertions. There can be no enduring peace for the British Empire unless it be peace with honor." (Loud cheers.)